Ultra high-speed 5G (fifth generation) mobile networks are coming and their impact on media and entertainment content distribution could be as earth-shattering as high-speed rollercoasters’ gravity-defying G-force.

The tech is not expected to go mass market until 2020, but governments and telecoms conglomerates have started building the foundations for delivering 5G.

It is the next step up from the current 3G and 4G signals that make smartphones the default medium for Millennial and Generation Z music fans and TV viewers. With 5G, the speed of content delivery could zoom to 100 times faster than 4G.

“Consumers of broadband data care little how the Internet is connected to them but only that they get speed and reliability of service,” says Tristan Veale, Media & Entertainment Market Analyst at UK research group Futuresource Consulting.

“5G is designed to deliver much greater capacity and bandwidth, which will be a fundamental part of supporting new use cases and the manner in which we communicate, consume media and construct the Internet of Things (IoT).”

In fact, London-based musician and academic Mischa Dohler (pictured) is confident 5G will overhaul the performing arts (including theater, dance, musicals, performance art and theme-park entertainment), one of the few creative sectors still not disrupted by consumer digital tech.

He has publicly stated 5G tech could revamp the sector the way Netflix has reinvented the way TV content is created and consumed. Via 5G, he has demonstrated that it is possible to put on a play in London and have the soundtrack played live by an orchestra in Los Angeles, with hardly any delays during the music’s transmission across the Internet.

“There's always the speed-of-light limit, but we've largely removed the networking and application delays. Overall, it’s an order of magnitude improvement,” says Dohler, who is also Head of the Centre for Telecommunications Research, and Chair Professor at the Department of Informatics, King’s College London.